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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133340
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 7:18am | IP Logged | 1
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Reed and Sue were introduced, in FF 1, already in a committed relationship (they were engaged). As such, despite the sidebar with the Sub-Mariner, their marriage was pretty much a foregone conclusion. (The "romance" with Namor can be understood in an external context -- Stan clearly thought Namor was a romantic figure, and Sue was, at that time, the only female character he, Stan, had to play with.)Peter and MJ got married because Stan was writing the newspaper strip as soap opera, not action/adventure, and he thought a marriage would add something to that. Shooter ordered the Spider-office to follow Stan's lead, in large part because DC had recently done a fake-out with Superman and Lois getting married that had generated a lot of Real World publicity. It was a flashback to the pair on Earth 2, but the civilian press mostly didn't pick up on that. Shooter's plan landed with a dull thud, as the relationship between Peter and MJ had nothing like the cachet of Lois and Clark. A civilian told that Spider-Man was getting married was likely to respond "You mean he's not already?" Unfortunately, once the marriage was in place, we were stuck with it.
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Craig Bogart Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 June 2008 Posts: 407
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 7:59am | IP Logged | 2
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Even after she was introduced in the early years, MJ wasn't even that big a part of the Spider-Man series. Her appearances were sporadic, and her sole function was to be a shallow party girl who made her boyfriend Harry's life miserable. She and Pete were made an item shortly after Gwen's death, but she was written out of the series for a few years with no discernable effect. I think it was DeFalco who made them a more serious item, and it's only fans that came in during the nineties that harbor the illusion that they were "made for each other." *edited for spelling
Edited by Craig Bogart on 28 August 2009 at 8:03am
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Paulo Pereira Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 April 2006 Posts: 15539
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 8:06am | IP Logged | 3
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Has there ever been a "What If...Gwen Stacy lived?"
BTW, Gwen should never have been killed off.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133340
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 8:17am | IP Logged | 4
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Beginning roughly with the death of Gwen Stacy, Marvel comics (and DC to a lesser but quickly catching up degree) entered into a period of short term thinking that persists to this day. Stories began to be "event" driven, and, by their very nature, those "events" were very often things which could not be moved passed. Doctor Doom could attack the FF a hundred times, Galactus could keep coming back, Magneto could unleash his latest schemes, but these things fell under the heading of "business as usual". The most they would require for future reference would be a "last time" or "months ago" comment. But events like the death of Gwen drew distinct lines thru the chronologies. It was very difficult to move on past an event as significant as the death of a major character without the intrusion of "real time". In large part, it was things like this that made it harder and harder for even some long-time readers to grasp the most basic concept of "comicbook time" -- ie, that there wasn't any. Stories like these made it impossible to return to "business as usual" the next issue, or even several issues later. If Gwen had simply moved away, Peter could have met a new girl very soon thereafter, and there would have been no big deal. But the death of Gwen forced an internal shuffling, and Mary Jane found herself suddenly thrust into a role that was not at all familiar to her, or to the readers. The swinging, carefree, party-time girl suddenly became a loving, caring friend --- and subsequently much more. It was as if, having killed off Gwen, the writers saw a hole appear in the canon, and reshaped MJ to fill it.All easy to spot in the clarity of hindsight, of course. I've been responsible for the deaths of a few characters myself, during this period of short-sightedness. And the problem is that marriage, birth and death are events that create permanent marks, permanent dividing lines, and really need to be thought out long and hard before any of them are implemented in this kind of serial fiction.
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Thanos Kollias Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2004 Location: Greece Posts: 5009
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 8:24am | IP Logged | 5
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Yes, there was one such What If (Gil Kane art, I think). I think the results were presented almost as tragic.
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Michael Penn Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006 Location: United States Posts: 12719
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 8:41am | IP Logged | 6
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Unless I'm not thinking clearly, it seems (and seemed to me at the time) that "switching" Alicia as the love-interest from Ben to Johnny was an unnecessary re-defining time-marker. Not that the way JB told the story was poorly done -- it wasn't. And it certainly didn't have industry-wide repercussions as with the Gwen Stacy's death, inter alia. But even if the story of Alicia leaving Ben for Johnny could be told not merely plausibly but quite well (and, again, it was), I just didn't care for how it turned away from established relationships that I believed worked so well for so long and could go on indefinitely.
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Jonathan Stover Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004 Posts: 749
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 8:57am | IP Logged | 7
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Was Alfred's death in the Batman comics of the 1960's the first major death of a supporting character? I'm leaving Bucky out of this because he had been out-of-service for much of fifteen years before Captain America was brought back in the early 1960's. Reading the Alfred death for the first time in the first Showcase Batman volume, it struck me as being quite bizarre -- even moreso once the Outsider storyline finally came to a conclusion. And the death of Alfred predated the TV show, as far as I recall, and so wasn't mandated by the producers of the show. Cheers, Jon
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Martin Redmond Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 June 2006 Posts: 3882
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 9:19am | IP Logged | 8
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I think the results were presented almost as tragic. ------------- Was there ever one What If story that didn't end in a laughable, pessimistic fashion?
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Flavio Sapha Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004 Location: Brazil Posts: 12912
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 9:41am | IP Logged | 9
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The big problem today is the self-referencing. I remember when Peter Parker became an assistant professor and got a whole new cast of supporting characters (kinda like Cap´s Brooklin friends). In those stories there was no reference to Gwen, you could read Spider-man for years, oblivious to this so-called personal tragedy he´d been through.
Not nowadays. Every issue, the guy has to throw a Gwen reference, if not the quote "with great power...". Blaargh.
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Thanos Kollias Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2004 Location: Greece Posts: 5009
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 9:42am | IP Logged | 10
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The FF one JB did as well as a more recent one by Austin and Immonen with Peter not getting the Spider powers instantly come to mind.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133340
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 10:04am | IP Logged | 11
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Was there ever one What If story that didn't end in a laughable, pessimistic fashion?•• The one I did.
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Don Zomberg Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 23 November 2005 Posts: 2355
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Posted: 28 August 2009 at 10:18am | IP Logged | 12
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Was it a bad decision? Maybe, maybe not. It was the first HUGE mistake Marvel made. I'm not big on "slippery slope" arguments, but in this case, it fits. Once you begin to age Peter Parker (and make him better looking, popular with beautiful women, a motorcylce rider), you make him into something other than what he started out as. Peter Parker began as an Everyman that the average reader could relate to. He soon thereafter became what the average reader wanted to be. On a sidenote, there's a peculiar mentality among some fans who look at a certain character and go, "I love Captain Fonebone! But I'd love him even more if they made him into something completely different!" Spider-Man and Wolverine are probably the two most glaring examples.
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